There was a time when Monday would call, and I would send it straight to voicemail.
Monday was the end of playtime, the end of rest and relaxation, and the universe’s demand that I return back to the salt mines.
At some point, it occurred to me that my job was exactly what I had wanted to do “when I grew up,” and it was not a call to go back to the salt mines but a call to get back to my calling. Once I realized that, I didn’t avoid Monday’s calls anymore.
If you resist Monday, it could be because you’re not doing the work you were called to do — or perhaps you are indeed following your calling but we’ve been trained to hate Monday.
What if you shed that training and choose to welcome a new week of doing the job that you fought to be chosen for?
Our “smart” devices fell back to Standard Time early this morning, and if we found every clock without a mind of its own last night, all of our clocks were “right” when we woke up.
It is a futile exercise — no matter how we set the clocks, we will have 10 hours and 11 minutes of daylight today. No daylight was saved during “daylight-saving time,” and no daylight is given back when Standard Time returns. We just change our frame of reference for reasons lost, ironically enough, to time.
As an early riser, I don’t object to sunrise coming up “an hour earlier,” because I enjoy watching the light outside slowly grow. If I had my way, we would always be on Standard Time, so the sun would rise around 4 a.m. in June, but whoever makes these decisions doesn’t want the sun in their eyes as they finish off a good night’s sleep, so they adjust the clock so the sun is in their eyes when they turn in for the night.
We each have 24 hours a day to do what we will, including the same amount of daylight whether we call it 7:00 or 8:00.
What we do with that time is more important than what time it is. It makes no difference if we decided finally to take action at 6:43 in the morning or 2:22 in the afternoon; what matters is the act. Whether it is too soon or too late is a matter of judgment — the action itself is what’s important.
We spend a lot of time — let me rephrase that — we waste a lot of time looking back with regrets. The present moment is all we control at any given time. We can assess whether a past action was a triumph or an oops — usually it’s somewhere in between — but allowing lingering melancholy over the passage of time and past actions takes away from what needs to be done in the here and now. Our earthly vessels are allotted a finite length of time, which naturally grows shorter by the minute, so it behooves us to waste as few precious moments as possible.
No, I do not consider it a waste to take time every morning to pick up a pen and fill at least three pages with my sometimes silly and often meaningless scratchings. Yes, I do chide myself when minutes and hours disappear into the void of antisocial media.
Even then, the antisocial platforms do serve the original purpose of giving friends a convenient space to interact. I am aware of what has become of friends and colleagues from 10, 20, 50 and 60 years ago, thanks to such platforms. To the extant that it ties us back together, each platform is a wonderful tool. I can do without whatever it is that draws us to fritter away precious moments staring at ads, vicious attacks and lies, and other material that exploits or appeals to the worst in us.
Every Sunday at precisely 9 a.m., my iPhone informs me how many hours and minutes I averaged staring at its screen in the past week. The number never fails to leave me aghast. Imagine if I’d spent that time on meaningful pursuits.
But I digress. I’d best be off applying this no-longer-saved daylight to its best use.
